[1][2] Gardner met actress Ina Clare while attending school at the University of Seattle where she was studying stenography and also waiting tables in Spokane, Washington.
[3][1][4] Clare told Gardner she was a "Follies type" and offered to put in a word with Florenz Ziegfeld.
She also performed on Broadway with Kid Boots: A musical comedy of Palm Beach and golf, starring as Miss Putter/Putty, alongside Eddie Cantor and Mary Eaton.
[6] In New Year's Eve in 1923 New York City, she married Edwin T. Hall (born June 30, 1895, in Chicago, Illinois), a businessman and shoe manufacturer from Boston, Massachusetts.
[10]On the 1930 census, she is shown living at 328 Church street in Wethersfield, Hartford, Connecticut, with husband Edwin T. and a son John, age 4, born in Boston.